COURAGE

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. -- Maya Angelou History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. -- Maya Angelou

Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom. Once hope has taken hold, courage must unite with wisdom. That is the only way of avoiding violence, the only way of maintaining the calm one needs to respond peacefully to offenses. -- Oscar Arias Sanchez

 

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received - only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage. -- Saint Francis of Assisi

"I can't imagine a right more basic than the right to breathe clean air. We've debated for years how that might be possible. Now that we know it is, will we have the courage and the conviction to get there?" ~ Ed Begley, Jr.

"We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends." -- Mary McLeod Bethune

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.
-- James Callaghan

You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk. -- Rosalynn Carter If you doubt you can accomplish something, then you can't accomplish it. You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through. -- Rosalynn Carter

"Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it." -- Pablo Casals

 

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
-- Winston Churchill

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
-- Winston Churchill

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
-- Winston Churchill

Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.
-- James Freeman Clarke

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
-- Alan Cohen

To see what is right and not to do it, is want of courage.
-- Confucius

An act of love, a voluntary taking on oneself of some of the pain of the world, increases the courage and love and hope of all. -- Dorothy Day

Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.
-- Bernadette Devlin

"Courage is the price life exacts for granting peace."
-- Amelia Earhart

"The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth..." -- Albert Einstein Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson “Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. -- Benjamin Franklin Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out. -- Benjamin Franklin

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
-- Erich Fromm

While every refugee's story is different and their anguish personal, they all share a common thread of uncommon courage – the courage not only to survive, but to persevere and rebuild their shattered lives. ~ Antonio Guterres, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, 2005-

Courage without conscience is a wild beast. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

 

“One man of courage makes a majority.”
-- Andrew Jackson

Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things. -- Jesse Jackson

I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. -- Helen Keller

"If people have moral courage to stand up to the smallest injustice – their own and other’s – it’s kind of like practice for when the big ones come around."
-- Colleen Kelly

And when at some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each of us, recording whether in our brief span of service we fulfilled our responsibilities to the state, our success or failure, in whatever office we hold, will be measured by the answers to four questions: First, were we truly men of courage... Second, were we truly men of judgment... Third, were we truly men of integrity... Finally, were we truly men of dedication?— -- John F. Kennedy, 1961

It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. -- Robert F. Kennedy

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.
-- Soren Kierkegaard

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream. -- Martin Luther King, Jr

"The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Perfect courage means doing unwitnessed what we would be capable of with the world looking on.
-- La Rochefoucauld

* We can still alter our course. It is NOT too late. We still have options. We need the courage to change our values to the regeneration of our families, the life that surrounds us. ~ Chief Oren Lyons

"Creativity takes courage."
-- Henri Matisse

Last, but by no means least, courage—moral courage, the courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle--the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.
-- Douglas MacArthur

With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.
-- Keshavan Nair

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
-- Anais Nin

"Another word for creativity is courage"
-- George Prince

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this.
-- Don Quixote, de la Mancha

Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.
-- Dan Rather

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards.
-- Paul Richter

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face…You must do the thing you think you cannot do. -- Eleanor Roosevelt You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give. -- Eleanor Roosevelt Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes over night. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down. -- Eleanor Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. -- Theodore Roosevelt

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction. ~ E. F. Schumacher Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility. ~ E. F. Schumacher

When we have the courage to speak out – to break our silence – we inspire the rest of the "moderates" in our communities to speak up and voice their views.
-- Sharon Schuster

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character -- Margaret Chase Smith

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
-- Ralph W. Sockman

All serious daring starts from within. -- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.
-- Dorothy Thompson

"It takes courage and commitment to act in a more forgiving fashion. It is not at all a sign of weakness but a mark of strength."
-- Carl Thorensen

It is curious—curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare. -- Mark Twain

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends, of most of the people you see every day, is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
-- Theodore H. White

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death!
-- Earl Wilson

"You've got to follow your passion. You've got to figure out what it is you love--who you really are. And have the courage to do that. I believe that the only courage anybody ever needs is the courage to follow your own dreams." -- Oprah Winfrey